Book Marketing Checklist for New Authors – 10 Essentials to Make a Headstart

Marketing your books to the right audience isn’t an easy skill. Especially as an author new to the industry, it can take a few trials and errors to understand and implement book marketing tactics that will bring you high sales.

But do you have the time to go through that route of making mistakes and learning from them? Of course not!

This is why we have condensed the basic book marketing essentials to a simple checklist to give you a head start.

If you’re an author who has already has a couple of books under your belt, then this blog isn’t for you. This is for the new authors who are yet to be exposed to the full force of the market to understand what they need to market their books successfully.

10-Point Book Marketing Checklist for New Authors

1. Have Your Own Website

This is the very first thing you need to consider. You need your readers to direct somewhere where they can learn more about you and your works. And this is exactly why you need an author website.

But investing in an author website, finalizing the design and keeping it updated can be a huge task. Instead, you can use the ready-to-use author website on AllAuthor. You can add your author bio, your picture, your books, all the details of your books, including the buy links, your social media handles and much more! And you can get all of these features for free! So if you’re just starting out, then AllAuthor is a good place to host your author website.

2. Have an Email Sign Up List

Many authors realize the importance of email sign-ups late in their careers. But if you want to do things right, you need to create a simple email form using any providers like MailChimp, Substack or any other free email marketing services to gather the emails of your interested audience.

You can then choose to interact with them regularly, update them about your new releases, promote your new book and get feedback. It would be best if you can gather emails before you launch your book to build that initial traction.

The email list will become your strong weapon in the future.

3. Get Your Book Posted on Book-Listing Websites

There are several book listing websites you can find on the internet — some free and some paid. The key is the identify which ones are worth it and which ones just waste your time and money.

You need to look at the traffic to the website and get feedback from other authors about their experiences. The best places to list are where the readers are often visiting. There are book listing websites based on your book theme, your book cost and discounts.

For example, at AllAuthor, we have a separate section of free ebooks, ebooks at $0.99 and ebooks with enormous discounts where many of our readers visit. You can get your books listed here too, by becoming a Pro-Author.

4. Be Active on Social Media

This is easier than said because nowadays, the demand for social media presence is greater than ever. You need to be constantly present to make sure that you aren’t forgotten. Since this will be your first launch as a new author, you need to market your books as much as possible.

You don’t need to spend money initially, just make sure to create meaningful relationships and get the word about your book going. If you’re finding it hard to be active on social media 24X7, you can use the Tweet Scheduler Tool on AllAuthor to schedule your tweets well ahead.

5. Gather Book Reviews Before Launch

Again, this is one practice that many new authors skip. Having good book reviews before you launch your book will increase its authority, especially when you’re a new name in the industry.

You can look at this blog to get some ideas about gathering book reviews: 5 Practical Ways to Get Book Reviews.

6. Create a Book Mockup

Book mockups are great for marketing your books. You can get professionally photographed images with book mockups without spending a lot. Book mockup images are essential to lend a professional appeal to your books which will translate to great revenue.

You can use AllAuthor’s Book Mockup Banner tool to create mockups.

7. Include Incentives

People like things that are free. And when you’re yet to establish yourself, you need to offer some incentive to your audience to convince them to buy your book. This incentive can be a coupon for your next book that’s about to be released, a resource related to your book, an ebook, worksheet, guides, or any other simple incentive that makes your book look better.

8. Connect with Other Authors

The author community is a very inclusive one that helps each other out. So when you’re a new author, making a few author friends would be great to get some advice on navigating the nuances of book marketing.

What’s more, the authors may also promote your new book on their social media, which brings a good stream of readers for you!

Here’s a short blog on how to connect with like-minded authors.

9. Introduce Book Deals

Book deals are great to get those initial sales going, plus it’s also a great tactic when you’re selling your books through Amazon. You can easily climb up the bestseller’s list by offering amazing deals as a launch offer for the first few days. This traction will ride up for some days even after your book deal has expired.

You can market your book deals way before the launch date to get considerable sales on your launch day.

10. Participate in Book Contests

With book contests, your book can get the opportunity to be in front of thousands of readers! There are so many book contests out there where the readers decide the winners. So your book will have the eyes of so many readers, out of which the interested ones can either buy your book or, at the least, sign up to your email list!

At AllAuthor, we host the ‘Cover of the Month’ Contest where we get over hundreds of thousands of votes every month. Even if you aren’t a paid author, you can participate in the contest for certain months. Check out the page to learn more about the criteria.

This book marketing checklist for new authors is specifically included to cover the basics for establishing yourself in your niche and gaining that initial traction. When you follow all these 10 points, you’ll be in a better position to market your second book!